In Working Knowledge, over the course of one hundred brief and evanescent texts, Král brings together, as his compatriot Milan Kundera writes in his introduction, “this strange and beautiful existential encyclopaedia of the everyday”. Whether describing twilight, a toothpick, the ritual of shaving or the act of going upstairs, his gaze is ingenuous, humble, amazed. Mute objects, fleeting gestures, changeless passions: Král forces us to look at them anew. Each limpid, graceful essay is a brief voyage of discovery in which lowly objects and everyday actions, so often unobserved, are transfigured. Petr Král has the unerring ability to perceive, to catch the commonplace by surprise and with the unsettling clarity see beyond the everyday to the fabric of life beneath.
Introduction by Milan Kundera. Translated from French language by prize winning translator Frank Wynne. Cover illustration film still from Coffee & Cigarettes, courtesy of Jim Jarmusch.
“This strange and beautiful existential encyclopaedia of the everyday is a lesson in modesty inflicted upon our sense of self”.MILAN KUNDERA
"An absorbing collection of short prose texts (...) probing the fabulous details of everyday life (...) Král's succinct texts are persuasive; they haunt the mind, thereafter influencing our perceptions".
France Magazine
